Yves here. One does not have to look hard to discern the troubling message of this post: that people are no longer motivated by appeals to broader, more abstract values, that what motivates them are more narrow, survival-oriented approaches...
But Lebo’s reading is based on a sense that individuals are pulling in their focus to me, mine, and my family. It’s reminiscent of a conversation I had with a friend who is the ex-wife of a billionaire, now living modestly and teaching calculus as an adjunct at a local college. She said:
I can’t get concerned any more about tragedies. We have billions of people living on this planet who are going to die because it can’t support them. I used to care about people dying in Guatemala but now I think that saving lives now means more deaths later. I know it sounds selfish but I’ve decided to care about science and my family and not much else.
I wonder how widely her sort of thinking is shared.
Nelson Lebo III: Sustainability is so 2007. Those were the heady days before the Global Financial Crisis, before $2-plus/litre petrol here in New Zealand, before the failed Copenhagen Climate Summit, before the Christchurch earthquakes, before the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP)…the list continues.
Since 2008, informed conversations on the economy, the environment, and energy have shifted from ‘sustainability’ to ‘resilience’. There are undoubtedly many reasons for this shift, but I’ll focus on just two: undeniable trends and a loss of faith....
...For most of my adult life I have banged the drum for sustainability. I don’t anymore. Sustainability is about voluntarily balancing three factors: human needs, environmental health, and economic viability. My observation is that it has been a failed movement and that the conversation has naturally shifted to resilience...
Dennis Meadows, a well-known scientist who has been documenting unsustainable trends for over 40 years, puts it this way:
The problem that faces our societies is that we have developed industries and policies that were appropriate at a certain moment, but now start to reduce human welfare, like for example the oil and car industry. Their political and financial power is so great and they can prevent change. It is my expectation that they will succeed. This means that we are going to evolve through crisis, not through proactive change.........
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/05/resilience-is-the-new-black.htmlI find these sentiments pretty compelling. Even people who have a deep understanding of the situation are almost wholly incapable of altering their faith in Progress being able to save them from the devil of this dilemma and doing something meaningful. The rest are just following the dictates of their subconscious survival instincts.
Fight like hell to the be last man standing. Don't worry about the rest as you can't do anything about it and it is 'their' responsibility to take care of themselves. As Meadows says, this leads to crisis and chaos...
I guess I am with the ex-billionaire wife mentioned above. Mass tragedies leave no impression on me whatsoever any more. It matters not because they are all dead men walking anyway. It seems kind of cruel to go to all the trouble of saving them when all of our other actions are designed to eliminate them somewhere down the road anyway. The same story is coming to a theater near you sometime soon....so keep your powder dry and take care of yourself.
